Name: Robert ReidTitle/bio: US
travel editor at Lonely PlanetTwitter/website:
@reidontravel | www.lonelyplanet.comBorn in: Portsmouth, VirginiaCurrently
living in: Queens, New York

1. Where would you rather be right now?
Howland Island in the South Pacific. It’s
where Amelia Earhart was supposed to land in 1937 before she disappeared. It’s
tiny, bean-shaped and flat. It’s been infested with rats, cats – and now
nothing. No one lives there and you can’t really go. It’s US property because
of all the bird droppings (that prompted the Guano Islands Act – too good to
make this stuff up). And it’s where the Japanese followed up their Pearl Harbor
attacks with three bombings because four scientists were living on it at the
time. Now it is only visited once every other year, by two scientists, who pitch
a tent, count birds, look at shrubs and write down what they find on notepads.
I’d go as long as I was assured all the rats are gone.

2. Famous person (dead or alive, real or fictional) you'd most like to
go on a trip with:All historical figures smell bad, so it’s
easy. I would go with Urban Meyer – the new Ohio State football coach – to
Nuremberg, Germany, to take clarinet lessons. The clarinet was invented there.
Side by side, Urban and I would toil over our clarinets for three or four hours
a day of private instruction, then go see old buildings and drink beer and talk
about football. I’ve watched football all my life, and I’m not short of
opinions on what teams need to do on third and fourth on their own 38-yard line
with 4:51 to go in the third quarter. But I really know nothing about all those
cute terms of formations and philosophies coaches talk about. And no one knows
more than Urban. Plus, I bet I’m better than him at the clarinet.

3. Tourist must-see you think is actually a "must skip":Italy in August. Definitely skip
that. So many people go then, some for the only time in their life, and it’s
just awful: crowded with tourists, absent of locals. Go in autumn.

4. You'd be mortified if people knew you did what when you travelled?Once I actually listened to Don Henley on a
bus trip. By choice. (Is it too late
to edit that out?)

5. Your most stranded, "oh-my-[deity]" travel moment:
I still find
it hard to speak about what happened on a road trip in my senior year in high
school. I went to see ZZ Top in Oklahoma City and l lost my concert shirt
before I could even get home. The shirt was awesome. It had The ZZ TOP car on
it, was a short-sleeve tee in modest matte grey. It apparently fell out of the
car at a rest stop halfway back to Tulsa. I never even got to wear it once.
When my parents saw my face when I got home they thought someone had been
arrested. Since that day, I’ve been robbed on the road and I’ve lost a
passport, but I doubt anything will feel more stranded or bleak as that.

6. Strangest meal abroad:I studied Russian in Russia in 1992, when
there was still trouble finding anything to eat. An enterprising lad opened a
burger push-cart outside the Hermitage in St Petersburg. A takeaway burger was
about 10 cents. Great deal -- except that the burger patty had glass in it. I
remember eating the half without glass, while noting how easy it would be to
toss a Van Gogh out of the open windows of the Hermitage.

7. If someone was visiting your town, what's the one thing you'd show them?I live in New York City now, which isn’t
really fair, so I’ll take you to Tulsa where I grew up. First, you’d need to
see the greatest statue of all time – the Golden Driller -- which isn’t gold,
and stands outside the fairgrounds. It’s a bloke in tight pants resting his
hand on an oil derrick. Then go up the slight incline on 71st Street
east of Sheridan. This is the Tulsa Hill. It’s lined with some dated apartments
and duplexes that looked appealing when Sting was still kinda cool -- but the
views! You can see the whole city under a tidy patchwork of oak trees and strip
malls from up there. A cousin from Texas once said, ‘wow, I’ve never seen
anything like this – where I’m from looks like a fat guy sat on it.’ Welcome to
Oklahoma, cuz.

8. Most unusual thing you’ve travelled with:I had a very lumpy bag – about four feet high,
made of the cheapest black canvas – with sad tiny wheels that I scoot-dragged
across Eastern Europe. In it, irrationally, was a large green accordion I had traded a stained MTV jacket for in Moscow. Accordions make
bad travel companions, particularly if you never play. And I never did.
Sometimes when I get angry I imagine doing dark things to that bag. And I feel
a little better.

9. Travel-related film or book that inspires you to pack your bags:Recently it’s Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable
Feast, which I only read for the first time a couple of months ago. It’s
essentially a Who’s Who travelogue of Paris in the 1920s. I used to make fun of
the mystique of that era. I don’t anymore. I was just spellbound with
Hemingway’s craft, which is easier to follow in non-fiction I think: noting what he does, what he observes, what he
chooses to write about. Little things like inviting the guy who bends spoons
with his mouth for a drink. It just makes me want to write more, pay attention
more.

10. The travel story you'll never stop bragging about:Yes, the greatest fringe benefit of travel:
showing off. I parachuted out of a Soviet bomber from WWII for $20 once; a
woman with purple hair interviewed me on TV in Dobrich, Bulgaria. I got to play
a five-string bass in Saskatoon; I got cockpit access with Iron Maiden’s Bruce
Dickinson on a flight to Iceland; and I got to train with the Mounties in
Canada! Apparently I’m only one of five civilians who has had had that
opportunity. And the only one to grow the regulation Mountie moustache.

11. Lay on us a priceless bit of travel advice or wisdom:
“Eyeball and footfall”.
Nothing beats just going and looking around to see what you find. Except maybe
comfortable pants.